Seems like one person or the other has been telling me that all my life — mothers, wives, doctors, bosses, etc.
But to paraphrase Woody Allen, life is like a shark. Sharks breathe by moving constantly through water. Stop moving and you die. Same with life. Stop moving, stop thinking, stop challenging and you stop living. The joints may ache, the muscles may scream and the mind may claim overload but stop and listen to the complaints of the body and you lose momentum.
I know too many people who contemplate every move, plan every step and think and rethink every decision. Such people get nowhere in life. You can sit on your butt and worry yourself to death over whether or not to take a risk or you can just go ahead and take it. Too many things have been ruined by those afraid to take a chance. They fear failure and fail without trying. They play it safe and get nowhere.
Don’t tell me to slow down. Hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work now. No time to slow down. Too many things I have not yet tried.
I may try and fail. It’s happened before and most likely will happen again. Or I may die trying. That’s life…and death. Better to have tried and lost than to have never tried at all.
doug
you won’t hear it
from me!
to paraphrase Beckett:
you must move
you can’t move
you move
I agree! You have to keep moving! Tis the best way.
Stumbled across your blog after falling in love with your photos. This is depressing. You aren’t as old as you feel. Get thee to a doctor. You men are all alike…sorry, but blogging lets me give free advice. And I have bushels.
Well, as sometimes good things happen, I chanced upon your blog. That was a result of partial chance: I first went to your capitolhillblue article on Bush Jr. That visit was prompted by a posting to a faculty posting by colleague (among other nefarious things, I teach psychology courses at an overseas American university.
What can one say–getting back to your comment on speed in life? In a way, I understand the eagerness to do new things–but sometimes I wonder if that’s always a good philosophy.
Maybe it’s a case of the yin yang idea: balance. Cold winters, hot summers, nice and bad people, harshness of daily life–or a warm, comforting body to lie next to in the darkness and loneliness of night. I don’t want to wax poetic here, or be overly dramatic, but these times (read: 9/11, post-9/11 idiocy, New Orleans etc.) really wear out one’s soul.
But to get back to speed demonology: I often see tourists pile out of busses in Heidelberg (Germany, where I live). They are really eager to take snaps of the city. “Snap! Snap! Click! Click!”–and away they go, to the next European city.
And when these folks get home they’ll be able to say “This slide show will let you know about what I saw in Europe!”
Of course, the folks can’t be blamed, because they have so little time to see so much. But then, that’s the point of my tome here: you get what you pay for.
When I visit a European city or area, I like to taste the food, drink the wine–and get the smells. Smells tell you a lot. They are the first thing I notice when departing a plane. Korea smells different than Panama. Frankfurt, Germany smells different than Strassbourg in the Alsace. But one needs time to pick up on that.
Earnest Hemingway once wrote that the best way to get the feel of the lay of the land was via bicycling. Not as fast as a car, but it does differently communicate.
Maybe it’s like getting one’s ticket punched in life. I live near an American military community, and I often hear that phrase being uttered by officer types–“getting one’s ticket punched.” But I recall a conversation I had with a sage friend who said that if you orient your life on what people say you are to do to be successful–let’s not go into definitions!–then you might get your ticket punched, but what is left of your personality is (like a used ticket) full of holes. What you then become–or end up being–is not what was your future but, rather, the visions of others.
So what am I trying to say? Maybe this: sometimes being slower at something has its value too.
A very dear friend of mine died of cancer a couple of years ago, and we both knew time was running out. He was in bed at home on drip, and we were carefully touching on philosophical issues. Carefully, because it was uncharted territory for both of us, given the circumstance. What was his need for philosophical answers? What were mine?
For some reason, don’t ask me how, we got on the topic of what one is to do when they find out that their life will be horribly shortened. I mentioned that some people talk about seeing the entire world, and doing tons of things that they felt needed being done. My friend asked me what I thought about that attitude. I replied that sometimes it would seem to me that one purpose in life would be to look at a flower and enjoy its beauty.
No easy answers. But I do know this: having lived in Europe much longer than I have ever lived in the USA, I have made the experience that there are meaningful differences in cultures. And their influence on us is remarkable. Sometimes the issue of speed in life seems to be such an American one. Which brings up a French saying that I’m fond of mentioning to my students: do you live to work, or do you work to live?
Thanks for your site–and putting up with my verbosity. I just had a leap of thrill when I saw your site and the comments here. Sometimes we need such pleasant surprises. Particularly when it seems that we have so little time to spend time with others–even cyber acquaintances.
And some of your photographs are absolutely breathtaking.
— John